THE kind of room you have to decorate is of more importance than many people suppose. A well proportioned room with handsome, not obtrusive, cornices, really well designed mantel-shelves, and walls of the right height in proportion to their length, certainly lends importance to every object brought into it. A poorly proportioned room, - such as we find in the majority of suburban residences, built by some dealer in brick and mortar who knows no more of design than a monkey, - will be found to exercise a destructive influence upon the furniture, however good. The large things will look clumsy without looking handsome; the small, insignificant without being mignonnes. The chimney mirrors will overpower the fireplaces; the doors will be refractory whatever they are dressed in; the meagre, miserable niches will admit of no furniture save what is meagre like themselves, and you will never get really fine lights and shadows upon anything.

It is for this reason that many of the old houses built by the brothers Adams, by Inigo Jones, and others of their time, have become popular with persons of taste, despite the many disadvantages of old houses; they are often so finely planned and so well built that they add lustre to the internal additions, for architecture received much attention in England during the decadence of the Renascence. Hence too architects, such as Mr. Norman Shaw, Mr.Street Mr. Gilbert Scott, etc, prefer to build in the style called Queen Anne, which admits of coloured brick, and insists upon deep, properly proportioned niches, cornices, and mantelpieces, and well-shaped windows, doors, and door entries. Many of the houses about Charles Street, Berkeley Square, Wimpole and Harley Streets, are thus admirable, and it is best before furnishing to get the rind of the house right if you can.

If you cannot (and many persons are too completely at the mercy of ignorant builders and landlords, not to say cheap leases and other domestic considerations), you must do the best you can in furniture as you have to do in dress, by concealing as well as revealing. You can hardly spoil a really fine room, as you can hardly disguise a beautiful woman; that is one of the reasons why Annamaniacs, who secure good old houses, have such a very easy task to furnish them; but you may amend a poor room with multitudinous hangings and pretty and interesting objects, all calculated as to tint and shape to harmonise with each other if not with their home. Paint and good colour are potent agents, and the suggestions I shall give will fit equally a handsome dwelling or a mean little villa.

To make a beautiful and artistic room it is not sufficient to collect a mass of good materials, and mix them together, You may spend a fortune at a fashionable decorator's, and make your house look like an upholsterer's showroom; or you may fill your house with antiquities of rare merit and calibre, and make it look like an old curiosity-shop; but it may be most unplea: -ing all the same.

The furnishing ought to be carried out on some sort of system; and this is especially difficult when the taste is already refined enough to prefer ancient art to new. For it is easy enough to buy cartloads of goods, but the temptations offered by each century in succession, each country in turn, make it impossible to carry out a definite plan without heroic self-control. Old Oriental, genuine old English (say fifteenth century Gothic), early Renascence, Louis XIV., or genuine Queen Anne, and genuine Georgian, all hold out beckoning fingers of welcome.

The aimless conglomeration of totally discordant periods and schools may be utterly confusing and unpleasant; although there is a mode of arranging an eclectic style of room which has very great advantages, eclectic and discordant being understood to differ.

The union of works of art of all kinds and from all quarters of the globe suggests a characterless and unmeaning medley, like a building compounded of several opposing styles; yet, when there is no preponderance of any single item which can put the remainder out of keeping, this union forms the most satisfactory, because elastic, background for changing elements, just as a liberal spirit often reconciles conflicting opinions on a common ground of peace. It has another advantage, in allowing of alterations, impossible in a room that severely represents a certain period. The first rule is, not to have too much of any one thing - directly there is a preponderance it must be isolated, and suggests a collection intact. The next rule is, to keep the key of colour low, by avoiding too-vivid spots or masses, yet the tone must be rather warm than cold. It is wonderful, when the elements are sufficiently varied, both in character and colour, how bright the new additions may be, or how quaint, or how simple, without disturbing the repose. The myriad curves and colours in an Indian shawl do not break the harmonious tone; only here, or there, one broad mass of soft self-colour recreates the eye.

In a shawl it is in the middle - in a room it may be on ceiling, or floor, or wall - somewhere the eye will insist upon it.

An eclectic room ought not to be built on any striking architectural style; that in itself would cause a dissonance. Gothic, or Oriental, or Renascence arches and mouldings would demand to be carried out by similar furniture. But as the common English room cannot lay claim to the dignity of 'architecture' at all, cornice, panels, windows, mantel-shelves being all equally nondescript, the eclectic style of decoration is facilitated. In fact, to put it briefly, extremes meet. Imperfect conglomerations are 'confusion worse confounded,' but if the medley is sufficiently great it forms harmony somehow like a Christmas pudding.

There are two systems of arranging an eclectic room. The room may avowedly embrace a period extending over certain centuries without pretending to be a 'period' room; it may have its prevailing character mediaeval, or Renascence, or eighteenth century; it may be rude or rich. Say the mediaeval element be preferred - then the colouring of the walls should be simple, yet gay; tapestries of worsted and plain surfaces of paint may be the background to all the objets de vertu produced up to, say 1500 - such as old oak, pictures of early schools, crystals and pottery; and the furniture, though modern for comfort's sake, should be massive, and built after the Gothic precedent of simple construction with decorated surfaces - the useful purpose being always honestly admitted in the ornament. If Europe and the East are ransacked for mediaeval work, old ivory or inlaid chests, and cabinets, the variety will be found enormous and the mixture not incongruous. In such a room a huge mirror of plate-glass would be absurd; not so spring seats, which do not assert the modern element noticeably by their outline.